Luna Moth Shawl

Here is the hand spun Luna Moth shawl that I recently completed. The green is 50/50 merino, the varigated pink is 100% silk. It took three weeks to spin and ply and another three to knit the shawl. I spun singles of green, and singles of green with intermittant sections of pink silk and then plied them together. The result is a beautiful striped pattern in the shawl - a total accident that Im really happy with!

A close up of the shawl. It's much more vibrant in person.

Barnes & Noble

Last Thursday, I got to spend some time at the Lynchburg Barnes & Noble with Dianne and Linda. Dianne asked for some help on learning to crochet the edge on the awesome linnen shawl she knitted. Regardless of what she says, she took to crocheting very quickly. The linnen yarn she was using seemed to like to split more than stay together which made for tricky work.

It's always nice to be able to take a break, knit, relax, and spend time with good friends.

Needlefelting Weekend

This past Saturday I taught an Introduction to Needlefelting class at Backstitches in Lynchburg. I forgot to bring my camera, but do have a picture of the finished piece:

The class was full and it was great to meet so many new fiber people. Everyone left with a finished project and several people commented that they were surprised to learn a new technique and have a finished item completed in only two hours. Best of all Linda and Dianne came and I got to visit a little with them after class. Dianne brought me this beautiful lace alpaca from Wooly Wonka Fibers in the Wasatch colorway, shown here in one of Andy's one of a kind bowls:

Ive been collecting pin cushions for a while and decided to see if I could make a needlefelted one in the shape of a hat. It went very well and we were admiring it on the coffee table last night when Kiwi hopped up on the couch. Being an opportunist, I just had to see if he would model it for the camera:

The Cure For I Cord and the Braided Rug

So, what have you been knitting, my friend Linda asked me last week. Well, I really haven't have much timt to knit as Andy and I are making a braided rug out of yarn. To be more specific, an I Cord braided rug. It's about 2' x 4' and before you think that Ive completely lost my mind, keep reading!

It's made out of three stands of I Cord, braided together, mostly leftover sock yarns and a little Encore thrown in for good measure. My stash is completely cleaned out of little bits of sock yarn left overs. You know what that means....

room for MORE YARN! Good timing on that since there are two fiber festivals coming up in the very near future.

While flipping through a knitting magazine at Barnes and Noble I came across a cure for I Cord:

It's called the Embelish Knit. It can make miles and miles of I Cord in no time. You just feed the yarn through and crank the handle. What could be easier? We tried different types of yarn in it, and sock yarn works the best, thick yarns seem to get tangled up in it so stay away from those. It was only about $15 and well worth it.

Felted Purse

Last week, Linda and I went to Backstitches in Lynchburg. I picked up a skein of Cascade and a skein of Arucana hand dyed Alpaca to make a felted purse for spring. I had 2 skeins of Arucana in hand dyed purple in my stash and combined them all to make this cute bag. The pattern for the flower came from Knitting Little Luxuries by Louisa Harding. I hand felted the flower in the sink and machine felted the bag in the washer.

The pattern for the bag started out as the brown bag pattern that came for free with the yarn. (It can also be found on Knitty.com, just do a search for brown bag pattern and it should come up) I decided as I was casting on that the little bag would not be big enough to haul all my stuff around, so it went under major alteration.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am not a fan of knitting ICord. In fact, I will do just about anything to avoid ICord. Really, it sounds like some sort of disorder. Did you hear, Mary has ICORD??? She is undergoing treatment for it. So, I decided to see how a non-knitted twisted cord would felt up. It went so well, I think I will be doing them from now on.

The picture is not great, I couldnt seem to get the color right. It's a beautiful lavender and green. Shown here on our rosemary bush.

Washing Alpaca Fleece

Friday, I met JoAnn of Fishwood Farms www.fishwoodfarm.com for lunch and she brought me a gift of beautiful alpaca seconds. The fiber pictured below is from Pintura one of their female alpaca's. Be sure to check out their web site for a sales list if you are in the market to purchase an alpaca, or alpaca products.

Not having any experience in washing raw alpaca, I did some reading on the net. What I found said to wash the fleece in cold water, no agitation, using gentle soap, and on a screen. I decided to be creative and used our fire pit screen to wash the fleece on. It's curved so the fleece stayed on it nicely even though it was a breezy day. The holes are larger than a screen that is used for windows, so any debris easily fell through but not so large that any fiber was lost through the holes.

1. Lay fiber on top of screen, tips down, remove any vm before washing.

2. Using cold water from a hose and the shower setting on the sprayer, wet the fiber thoroughly

3. I then took Dawn Odor Reducing Liquid Soap (alpaca does not smell strongly like sheep's fleece, but it does have a light "farm" smell) poured about 1/8 cup in my hand and used the sprayer to evenly distribute the soap over the fleece. Both of my hands were busy doing this, so no picture.

4. Rinse the fleece thoroughly, turning over gently if necessary to ensure all the soap is removed.

The result is a nicely cleaned fleece that is ready to lay out to dry. I put this fleece on our deck in the sun to dry and gently fluffed the locks while it was drying.

Pintura is multicolored which is why there are some reddish brown areas in the fleece pictured.

Happy Easter

Happy Easter from the Easter Sheep! He is standing on top of felted bowls that I can't seem to stop making. They are Plymouth Pattern P537. I walked into Backstitches in Lynchburg a couple of weeks ago, and there sitting on the table, were two of these adorable bowls. They were made by the nicest lady, Robin. She is an avid knitter and spinner and hosts a knitting get away every January. You can check it out here: http://www.fortheloveoffiber.typepad.com/

Backstitches didn't have the pattern (they don't carry Plymouth) so Linda and I took a trip up to Charlottesville to It's a Stitch and got it there.

These bowls knit up in an hour or less and are so much fun to do. Im going to put gift cards in them this Christmas. Much better than the store bought card holders, don't you think?

From bottom to top: 2 strands Norro Keuron, 1 strand of the same Norro and 1 strand Cascade, 2 strands handspun stash, 2 strands Cascade, 1 strand handspun stash and 1 strand Cascade.

This is a cute little needle felted Easter egg that I made out of some left over rovings. The light green has some angelina in it which gives it a nice sparkle.